I have been searching and learning a bunch but there doesn’t really seem to be any good methods that I can find.
You would think more companies would be putting out DAS considering the capabilities of USB3.2 and Thunderbolt. I have been looking for a quality DAS but almost all of them don’t have built in hardware RAID. I don’t really trust software RAID. Mostly rebuilding if the software crashes or my hardware crashes. Even if I was ok going with soft RAID, almost every model has a huge flaw.
It feels like getting a NAS is the only real way to go and basically just using it as an ethernet DAS for my server. It just seems like a waste of a processor. Should I just build a DAS with 4 Bay Rack? Then I have to find a place to mount a PSU and tidy up one of those PCIe to 4 Sata boards and PCIe to USB board as well as a couple fans.
Is there a good cheap enclosure to just install 4 HDD, a couple boards and a PSU? Am I missing some other easy option? It just feels like the market now is to buy a NAS and use it as a DAS.
I have a few systems like this. They were made by a company called DATOptic and they use Areca TB cards. I have two of their TB3 towers. They work well but the support is kinda lacking from Areca – very slow and not very helpful. I had a lot of trouble with an older TB2 one and I eventually just had to get rid of it because it kept freezing up my system. The TB3 ones have been much better.